From a Windsor Magazine article entitled “Animals That Are Soldiers” (Vol. 14):
“Jack,” the retriever dog of the 12th Lancers, also accompanied that regiment into active service. Jack is a thorough Lancer; he delights in the very sight of a lance, and barks joyously when he sees the regiment ready for the march, and promptly takes his place with the men in the ranks. It was said that, of all our cavalry, the Boers feared the Lancers most, and Jack certainly encouraged them in these views; one may well pity any enemy who tries to kill a 12th man with Jack in the neighbourhood. His hair is beautifully black and curly, and he is about as intelligent a retriever its anyone can find (pg. 264).
Jack was a “curly-coated retriever,” but I a bit cautious about giving him designation as a member of the curly-coated retriever breed. One of my goldens had a coat that was quite similar to this. Indeed, she very strongly resembled Jack in build and coat that I was somewhat shocked at the similarity. She was a very curly golden, who even had a partial water spaniel topknot!
The 12th Lancers were an active unit during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). I don’t know of how much use Jack would have been combat, but he certainly would have been good company. And if the unit had to shoot wild game for their dinner, they could always rely upon this intelligent retriever.
JAck looks very much like a Murray River Curly Retriever…white patch on the chest, loose curl…
I’ve found a number of photos of very similar dogs. On asking a Curly-coat Retriever person with some knowledge of the breed’s history, she commented that they are probably interbred (CCR crossed with another retriever) retrievers, or even cross-breds (CCR bred to some other breed not a retriever). Both interbred and crossbred retrievers could be registered with The Kennel Club up until sometime after WWII.
Dogs resembling this one can still pop up in Curly Coated Retriever litters. While this coat, as pictured, would no longer be suitable for the show ring of today, there are many curlies who won in the show ring as recently as 15-20 years ago with this type of coat.
And white chest spots, while undesirable in the show dog, are still seen in the breed to this day, in the U.S., Europe, the UK, and Australia.
A caution when making decisions on whether an older photo is, indeed, a curly coated retriever: the coats you may see in the show ring today are usually (but not always) the result of extensive grooming, including the shaping of the body coat with scissors and/or clippers. That means the coats are not as long as they might be had they not been clipped/shaped/snipped. Some curlies always have a tight mass of crisp curls. Others, if not frequently groomed, will develop a longer hair strand which will then naturally become less curly because the weight of a longer hair strand straightens the hair somewhat.
I found that one of the Tiverton dogs was behind two of the early popular sires in golden retrievers:
http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/curlies-in-the-foundational-pedigrees-of-the-golden-retrievers/
So we have a connection.
In a number of the books that I have read, retrievers were considered to be a mixture of dogs in the 1800’s. There were groups that were similar such as the black flat-coated retrievers that appeared at shows but the retriever “breeds” seemed to not really be very well established at all even by 1900. We try so hard to figure out what the beginnings were… well it can drive you crazy! I have been spending the better part of an hour trying to trace Michael of Moreton back and seeing how he fits into the Nous and Belle picture… it’s like working a puzzle… and figuring the percentages of each breed is near impossible (especially since we aren’t sure of some of the named dogs’ breeds or what they even looked like)
It’s rough going especially when the Guisachan records end at around 1890.
The easiest dogs to trace are Sewallis Shirley’s dogs, the elite flat-coat/wavy-coats, which are behind a lot of goldens.
But the less than elite dogs, well, they are the gentlemen’s lurchers!
The one common thread throughout the history books is that these retrievers were bred for performance and their appearances were second to that.
“Every dog is called a retriever that can gallop for a half-mile after a wounded hare, whether he is small as a spaniel or big as a calf, his coat black, red, or brown, or of all horrible mixtures black and white, and whether he is rough as a sheep or smooth as a rabbit; a pure-bred retriever does not exist, for he is a mixture of colley, sheepdog, setter, and Newfoundland, with a strain maybe of poodle and Irish water spaniel, the latter being the best cross of all.”
-Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey – 1892
http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/retrievers-as-the-purpose-bred-mongrels-of-the-aristocracy/
Ha ha ha ha… I guess we are reading the same material!
Hey Retrieverman!
Are you familiar with the white collie? Is this the collie that writers keep talking about that is mixed into the retrievers?
http://golddoghistory.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/white-collies/
Look at the photos from Country Life!
I’m not familiar with those, but I am familiar with those of Queen Victoria. Maud Earl painted one named Snowball:
The original pet collie don’t have the narrow muzzle and head. They originally looked more like English shepherds. However, we also have prick-eared collies and collies with semi-prick ears that were actually working dogs in the north of Scotland. These later became the fashion among pet collies. But those that were commonly kept as pets early on didn’t have the classic Lassie features.
Lyndon Johnson also had one:
Grace Coolidge (Calvin’s wife) also had one named Prudence Prim:
http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/prudence-prim.jpg?w=150&h=313
White collies such as featured in the Country Life article almost certainly have nothing to do with retrievers. While the odd working collie may have entered into the retriever ancestry, that would have been (as Scottie has said) the sort more like what is now called English Shepherd, and not solid white.
While predominantly white is an allowed color in collies both rough and smooth, the breed standard calls for color on the head covering ears and eyes. Without this coloring, the occurence of sight and hearing abnormalities, including micropthalmia and deafness is rather high. Very similar to the case in “double merles” (homozygous merle). No retriever breeder would chance introducing such defects.
The white in collies is a different gene, and a certain percentage of white collies are actually white double merles or at least were until people realized that you shouldn’t breed merle to merle.
White in collies can be from any of several genes: Extreme white spotting (as in tri or sable-marked whites and some merle-headed whites), double merle (anything from entirely white to white with small merle markings), and also the so-called albino white, which lacks any real color at all in skin or hair. Some of the whites of years back may have had similar color formula to the Samoyed or White Spitz, but I’m not sure if that still exists in the breed.
Some of the problem lies in the occasional difficulty in determining what type of “white” the dog may be — hence the standard’s admonition about keeping color.
I think it is logical to say that the collies that were bred together with other hunting dogs in the 1800’s would not have been these white ones but I never really accepted the theory that there was any collie at all until I kept reading it in numerous books and then after seeing the collie all white. When you look at the collie in white and with the larger ear and the not as long coat as you see today, it is so much easier for me to accept that the collie was bred into the retriever way back when. It is listed in so many writings from the 1800’s that you have to think there is some merit to the fact that collies were bred in. These photos just make that seem more plausible to me (even though these photos were taken after 1900) The retriever was largely considered a mixed breed at that point in time.
I am reading:
“the flat-coated variety was hardly known, and in the first volume of the Kennel Club stud book he is classified with the curly coats; but now it is rapidly forcing its cousin from public favour. Harder in mouth, not so amiable in temper, nor so companionable as the flatcoated variety, the curly-coated retriever chiefly depends upon its popularity as a wild-fowl dog, and as a winner on the show bench. He is the hardier and pluckier dog of the two, but requires the greater amount of work to keep him in proper subjection.”
Do you know, is that still true today? Does this account for those rogue Goldens who aren’t as loving as most?
The flat-coat is the wavy-coat. It’s the same blood, just different coats. Goldens still have the two coats. It became very popular as retriever on estates because it was so easy to train and so soft mouthed. It also trialed well.
Curlies were “wildfowl” dogs– wildfowl means waterfowl, but they didn’t trial well. Often poachers kept them so they could steal birds and rabbits/hares from the estates (in England the game were always property of the landowner). Gamekeepers also kept them as their personal dogs that picked up the birds the flat-coat/wavy-coat/golden/Labrador complex dogs missed. They also used them to rat and kill vermin.
That may explain why they historically had harder mouths.